2013 Barcelona FINA World Swimming Championship

On the back of a somewhat disappointing FINA World Swimming Championships for Britain, RAPs would like to congratulate Fran Halsall for her bronze medal in Barcelona last month. Fran set her third fastest 50m freestyle time of her career. She also finished fourth in the 50m butterfly.

Unfortunately Fran was the only swimmer in the British team to win a medal, with three of our swimmers coming in fourth, just one place out of the medals.

This was the first international meet under the new leadership team of Chris Spice, the National Performance Director and Bill Furniss, Head Coach. They have announced that they must make changes to ensure British Swimming gets back on form and starts to compete for more medals.

Speaking to British Swimming, Furniss explained:

“For the first four weeks of my job, Chris and I were looking at the restructure. We have looked at everything we do, all over Britain.

“There has been a massive amount of work to get a new performance management team in.

“Once that’s over, my job will be with the coaches. I’ll be on deck with the coaches, I’ll be in their ear and I want to improve our conversion rate. I definitely see that as my primary role.”

Spice called the Championships an “assessment meet” which has shown the team their current standing and where they need to be to begin to have an impact internationally.

The leadership team are keen to bring back ‘event’ and ‘relay’ camps and will aim to improve on the psychological aspect of racing.

Although this year’s late trials allowed juniors to make the team, it was not so beneficial aerobically because of the short gap between the trials and the main event. Because of the timing of the Commonwealth Games next year, trials will be held in April. The earlier trials should result in a stronger build-up for the team, and hopefully bring more medals as a consequence.